Like most, I completely wasted my time watching the England footy friendly against U-S-A! Predictably, it was drab, uninspiring and… just like every other England friendly I’ve seen. So, when it was wrapped up, and BBC pundit Lee Dixon’s cries of “bring back The Apprentice” were still ringing in my ears, I flicked over to Five to watch My Car Is My Lover: Strangelove (Five, Wednesday, 28 May, 10pm).

These TV ‘freak shows’ have been on the rise again… not seen since… well, Five first started to broadcast. So, going back to their roots, Five turned our sofas into bleachers and hollered “Roll up! Roll up! Sights to dazzle! Sounds to disturb! Amazing feats of amazingness to amaze you mental!” It was time to take a curious peer into the curious world of Mechaphiles.

The show kicked off with a grainy reconstruction about a guy… “let’s call him George”… who was carrying out some kind of sordid affair with “another member of the family”. He was from a religious family and the whole thing seemed very grim and dimly lit. Turned that the member of the family getting the attentions of George was an Austin Metro. Cue “Metrosexual” joke. Quite why we needed a reconstruction to inform us what Mechaphilia is, is quite beyond me as it can be summed up quite easily. This is it: Mechaphilia is when people have a relationship which involves having sex with their cars. That’s it. No need for fictional George and his religious upbringing. Just plain and simple. Some folks get off with cars. Honk.

The first chap we met was, admittedly, an unusual chap. He was called Edward Smith and he hailed from Washington. Edward is in love with ‘Vanilla’… a ’72 Beetle. Wearing a hat with bear ears on, he gave ‘Vanilla’ a clean and could “hardly resist her”, showering ‘her’ with kisses. He might be the only man I’ve ever seen kissing a car, but he’s certainly not the only bloke I’ve seen calling his car by name, or ‘she’ or grunting with primal pleasure when revving or whatever. However Edward is the only bloke I’ve seen reciting self penned poetry to said car… it contained a line about them becoming one and ended with “loving seed”.

Edward wasn’t just into cars. He also got his kicks with helicopters. His most famous conquest is Airwolf. Yep. Airwolf. To be honest, I don’t know anyone my age who wouldn’t have it away with Airwolf… I mean, c’mon! IT’S AIRWOLF!

Thankfully, the show didn’t dwell on the eccentric. We also met Jordan from Missouri who also happened to be having a relationship with a Beetle (’67). Instead of being overbearing and kooky, he seemed pretty mellow and, thankfully, eloquent too. He’d come ‘clean’ to his housemate who, thankfully, doesn’t mind one bit. Jordan said that he didn’t see his Mechaphila as a ‘fetish’ (as that would tend to suggest that it’s a bit on the side), but that this is more like a sexuality.

The two met at a Mechaphiliac’s wet-dream… a swapmeet for cars. Last night, initially, I was worried that Edward was being stitched up in the edit to make him look more unhinged, but unfortunately, Edward was a little too free with his love. En route to the car show, Edward ended up spunking over the car of the people making the film who are “shocked at his audacity”. 1919 Ford Model T also caught Edward’s eye from the road. Edward also had his way with Jordan’s car while he slept. It seemed that Edward was a man with a precocious appetite for all cars.

I was dragged two ways by this show. Firstly, I was a bit irritated that each little sign of affection was undercut with an air of ‘sex’. All you drivers out there will have, at some point, portrayed your car as a human. Y’know, that “she’s a beaut isn’t she?” attitude. Or the talking and encouraging the drivers do to their cars when their willing them up a hill. Of course, I dare say most of you haven’t given it ‘the seed’. But, whatever. The other way I was dragged was that Edward wasn’t so much an eccentric, but rather predatory when it came to sex.

At the swapmeet Edward walked around kissing all the cars and with a clear as day erection. The show refer to him as a cross between a “teenage boy and a dirty old man”. Y’see, the thing is, because he’s so brazen, and so unable to control himself (as one naked midnight stroll shows), that, if he was with a woman, you’d still be mightily unsettled. Whereas Jordan plays it cool, and causes no harm, Edward seems like he has a problem.

All that said and done, I could only bless my luck that this show wasn’t presented by Mark Dolan. If he’d done it, he would have either been freaked out by the whole thing or he would have resorted to “do you stick you pee-pee up the exhaust pipe?” Still, this show wasn’t far away in terms of sneering… the Five crew were clearly a little more reserved.

As a show, we learned absolutely nothing about anything, other than the fact there are blokes out there who get aroused over cars. While the producers of the show merely watched, as opposed to delved, I worked out that Mechaphiliacs don’t know whether to humanise their cars or not. They refer to the car’s face and arse, but by the same token, they’ll ‘cheat’ on them, even if they’re parked up a matter of feet away.

Whatever the outcome, Five has more of the same next week with a woman who is married to the Eiffel tower and in love with the Berlin Wall…